Port Hawkesbury Paper eyeing diversification opportunities

With the price of its glossy printing paper falling and an ongoing battle against American countervailing duties, the Port Hawkesbury mill continues to try to diversify.

“The price of paper is going in the wrong direction (but) no one wants to shut the mill down,” Mark Dube, development manager for Port Hawkesbury Paper, said Friday. “(Meanwhile) we’ve got a legal team in the States that costs us more than $2 million a year.”

“We need to diversify and we need to do it quickly.”

New products are not going to replace the paper the mill produces, but they will help keep the mill sustainable, Dube said.

The mill has hired experts to test new products, including wood-based alternatives to petrochemicals, and another that is hot off the cylinders: paper bags and heat-resistant sandwich wrappers, the kind that McDonald’s and Subway burn through by the hundreds of thousands daily.

“It wouldn’t be all of our production, but it would be a piece of it,” Dube said. “The fast food industry is growing. We want to be there, ready to do the packaging.”

So far, the mill hasn’t found the right process. In experimental batches, the wood fibre contained too much sugar, which caused the paper to yellow when heated.

“We’re working on it,” Dube said.

The mill is also making other wrapping products, including the kraft boxes and gummed sealing tape used by online retailers like Amazon, and even a forestry-based, renewable alternative to bubble wrap.